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We must tell about an alert about danger of flattening mountains in many cities of Chine, like Shyan or Lanzhou. In the picture you see the difference between the extension of Shyan in 2010, and how in 2012 most of the mountains around the city have been flattened. This process has made an increase of pollution and a high risk of fifantic earthmoving, floods, impaired waterways, soil erosion, particulate pollutant emission to the atmosphere … associated with that.

The case of Shyan exemplifies the way in which China is conducting a campaign to pave mountains and gain territory suitable for new construction in emerging cities leaving environmental, geological and security issues in the background.

In the next video, you will se more examples of this situation, all around China:

A new NASA-led study has discovered an intriguing link between sea ice conditions and the melting rate of Totten Glacier, the glacier in East Antarctica that discharges the most ice into the ocean. The discovery, involving cold, extra salty water – brine – that forms within openings in sea ice, adds to our understanding of how ice sheets interact with the ocean, and may improve our ability to forecast and prepare for future sea level rise.

“I was curious why Totten was changing so fast when the glacier just next to it wasn’t changing much,” said Ala Khazender of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of the new study, published online Dec. 5 in the journal Nature Communications. Combining satellite observations with ocean numerical modeling, Khazender and his colleagues developed a hypothesis that reductions in the volume of brine would increase Totten’s thinning and melting. Additional research supported that hypothesis.

Ice loss seen in Antarctica is generally attributed to the well-documented rise in temperature of the surrounding ocean, but scientists are still puzzling out the mechanisms behind the regional variations that they are observing. The new study highlights the key role of processes occurring on small geographic scales in determining how global climate change can affect the stability of ice sheets.

Satellite observations from NASA’s ICESat-1, which measures how much ice surfaces are rising or falling over time, revealed that Totten Glacier was thinning rapidly. It currently discharges enough ice into the surrounding ocean to fill Lake Erie in just over a week. The nearby Moscow University Glacier and its floating ice shelf were showing little change. Why the difference? “We were convinced that the answer must be in the ocean,” Khazender said.

The ocean around Antarctica is warmer than both the continent’s icy surface and the polar air. Ice shelves (the floating front edges of glaciers that extend tens to hundreds of miles offshore) melt more because of contact with ocean water below them than they do because of sunlight. Melting at the undersides of ice shelves is part of Antarctica’s natural water cycle, but when glaciers start melting unusually quickly, it’s a sign that something is off balance.

Khazender and his team of colleagues from JPL; UCLA; the University of California, Irvine; and Utrecht University in the Netherlands combined ICESat remote sensing observations from 2003 to 2008 with ocean numerical computer models to seek insights into the interaction between the ice shelves and their ocean basin.

According to the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the UN, the Earth’s temperature will rise more than two degrees Celsius by 2100, does not materialize an aggressive mitigation policy, then you can not stop the global warming and its devastating consequences. The report by 831 scientists from 85 countries, said that climate change is “real, is happening now and humans have caused most of it.”

Scientists have almost 100% certainty that human activity is responsible for the majority of global warming since 1951. The sea level rise has accelerated, the extent and volume of snow and ice extent have decreased, the melting of glaciers and ice sheets is much faster, while the oceans warm and acidify. Mexico, meanwhile, has witnessed the increase in the frequency and duration of droughts, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters linked to climate.

If carbon dioxide emissions are doubled, the increase in temperature is three degrees Celsius, a premise that remains from the 2007 report. In the best scenario, scientists consider it possible that the temperature could rise 1.5 degrees, while in the worst case, the temperature could rise to 4.5 degrees, which would be “catastrophic for people and the planet.”

Santiago de la Peña, a scientist at Ohio State University, and lead investigator of a NASA project, has indicated that the climatic situation of global warming we saw in Mexico with the recent storms that flooded coastal states in the Pacific and the Atlantic.

United States conducted this weekend two assault and capture operations against Islamic terrorism prominent members who were in Libya and Somalia. “It’s never too late,” John Kerry said Sunday , Secretary of State, which is in Indonesia attending the summit of the Asia and Pacific countries (ASEAN ) . Al Qaeda ” can run but you can not hide ,” said the diplomat .

The name of wanted terrorist has not been made ​​public by the Pentagon , but apparently the goal was Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr , known as Godane Ahmed , head of Al Shabab . According to military sources , no American was injured or killed in the mission but the command caused several casualties among members of Al Shabab before retiring.

The operation carried out in Libya by U.S. forces assisted by the FBI and the CIA resulted in the capture in Tripoli of Nazih to Ragye , 49, known by the alias Anas al-Libi and sought by the U.S. for masterminding the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania , which killed 224 people , including 12 Americans. Al Libi was to be delivered yesterday in the U.S. to the appropriate authorities , putting an end to a hunt order and totaling 15 years and offered five million dollars for delivery ” dead or alive” .
If the operation in Libya was fulfilled effectively and Anas al-Libi was captured by a detachment of Special Forces Delta masked in the streets of Tripoli when returning home after morning prayers , tried to pull a gun from the glove compartment of your car to defend without success – , on Somalia are still a lot of confusion . According to an official U.S. source would target escaped , but other sources say that he died . Yes it is a fact that the Navy Seal had to ask for help to be removed from the operation by helicopter after suffering heavy fire for more than an hour.

Abu Anas al- Libi . / AFP / FBI
On the mission carried out in Somalia by Navy Seals command – namely 6, the same that killed Osama bin Laden , details were sparse and confusing. It is known that before dawn Saturday , the command landed on the shores of the Indian Ocean with speedboats to capture the stronghold of Barawe ( a small port south of Mogadishu ) a prominent leader of al- Shabab , the Somali Islamist militia linked to Al Qaeda and responsible for the attack on the mall in Nairobi ( Kenya ) last month , which left at least 60 victims.

Global warming has reached a crisis point. If unaddressed, rising global temperatures will trigger dramatic increases in extreme weather events and cause the oceans to rise, threatening all coastal cities, displacing hundreds of millions of people, and destroying thousands of species. At the very most, we have about ten years to act before natural forces spin out of any human capacity to control events.

Make no mistake: this will impact you and certainly all of our children.

The urgency of global warming mandates that each and every one of us become climate leaders. For the first time in our lives, indeed for the first time in history, all of us must take responsibility for our climate, whether at the individual, community, company, institution, state, or national level. We are all responsible for global warming. We must all share in the leadership required to solve it, for nothing less than the fate of human civilization is at stake. The crisis is that stark, the choice is that clear, the leadership required is that urgent.

If we rise to this challenge, if we take climate leadership, we will generate climate prosperity and climate justice because it is precisely our capacity to solve our greatest crisis that affords us our greatest opportunities for growth within the context of sustainability and alignment with natural systems.

The 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign is designed to empower you to take action, to join with others similarly concerned, and to create models of climate leadership around the world which can show the way to reducing our carbon emissions by 80% by 2020, which is essential to stop global warming.

The global warming issue can be approached in many ways , so we must choose a method for submission . The other aspects can be developed in the comments.

Basically there are two groups of people , those who argue that the phenomenon is real and those who deny it . Among those who believe in the existence of this phenomenon , there are two main groups , the deniers in the interest of ideological and serious skeptics were not convinced by the evidence.Global Warming
Is there global warming? Is there sufficient evidence for it ? Are we still in time to stop this process or not? Is it a man-made phenomenon or is, for example , the result of terrestrial solar cycles or “normal” ? Can we adapt to its effects or will be damaged heavily in – for example – a drastic reduction of the world population , and there is nothing to do about it ?
There are things that attract attention , such as that being Australia liberal and modern country , is both one of the world’s highest polluters per capita.

It seems very clear that there is ice in glaciers that are rapidly disappearing . We see pictures of ” before and after” constantly , that make us think that it is undisputed that , at least , is happening.

China , which is constantly demonized by the U.S., is the most dynamic country in finding and implementing solutions among large . Clearly that is located between applied science and technology to solve development problems without interrupting it.

And the consequences of just this aspect of the process is very important and were illustrated by Jack in the previous thread when he referred to the possible disruption of the North Atlantic conveyor belt . With that only Britain has Siberian climate is enough to create a huge global financial crisis . Just remember the damage to the world economy that led to the American subprime crisis . The effect on GDP of a country as important as Britain is orders of magnitude more serious. London has the largest currency market in the world, the largest reinsurance market and one of the largest capital markets.

The already disastrous situation of the seas will become much worse with the disappearance of coral , true incubators of thousands of species of fish.

Currently, about 70% of the world’s freshwater withdrawals are for agriculture, 14% are for domestic purposes and 16% are for energy and industry.

Unless we change the way we use water, we could face a 40% gap by 2030 between global demand and what can sustainably be supplied if more people need more water. In the 20th century, while population grew by a factor of four, freshwater withdrawals grew by a factor of nine.Many countries are extracting groundwater faster than it can be replenished . Most of the world’s major rivers now hardly reach the ocean because of the extensive diversion of water for human use. Increasing water scarcity could cause annual grain losses equivalent to 30% of current world consumption (at the same time as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says we will actually need 70% more food). As we grow wealthier, the more freshwater we need to supply cities, power plants and factories and to produce higher protein food such as dairy, meat and fish.Water for EnergyThe United States Geological Survey estimates that to produce and burn the 1 billion tonnes of coal the country uses each year, the mining and utility industries withdraw 55 to 75 trillion imperial gallons of water annually. That’s about the equivalent to all the water that pours over Niagara Falls in five months. The International Energy Agency forecasts that the world economy will demand at least 40% more energy by 2030 ; for non-OECD countries where the increase in energy demand will be highest, coal remains an important energy option.Water for Food

A kilogram of meat requires up to 20,000 litres of water to produce (compared with about 1,200 litres to produce a kilo of grain). Global demand for meat is forecast to increase 50% by 2025.

A Nexus of Water Challenges

This water-for-food vs water-for-energy dilemma the United States faces is similar to the “nexus” challenge which many fast-growing economies will have to tackle soon: how to simultaneously manage water for food, energy, people and the environment?

For example, as much of Asia becomes more urbanized and industrialized,more water will be directed towards energy and away from agriculture. Modelling undertaken for the World Economic Forum suggests that a 76% increase in water demand for energy and industry will be required across Asia by 2030 compared with today. This will occur at exactly the same time as these countries will need to almost double their food production. Against a baseline of 70% of water already being used for agriculture, how can these competing challenges be squared?

In addition, changing climatic conditions will accelerate freshwater security challenges. Unlike options in energy, there are no substitutes or alternatives to water. We will simply have to adapt. This is not only a problem for the poorest nations. Water security will affect people in Australia, the Balkans, California, China, India, Jordan, Greece, Mexico, North Africa, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Spain, South Africa and Turkey among others. In fact dryland areas represent more than 40% of the world’s surface area, covering over 100 countries.